This hint that he knew how far Sarhadi and Jamila had gone in their very untraditional courtship had come as a shock. More likely it was just an educated guess. Thanks be to Allah that the bangers were not so educated.
His mother had greeted news of the imam’s accord with typical directness.
“Grand,” she’d said. “Not that it ’ud have made a ha’porth of difference if the old bugger had said owt else.”
While Kalim never doubted that his mother’s had been a true conversion, it was quite clear that the spirit of Allah had supplemented rather than replaced the spirit of Yorkshire independence.
Tottie was standing alongside the sofa-throne now, taking care of the gifts of money, most of which came in the form of notes or checks, though some of the guests, harking back to the days when the bride was showered with coins, gave all or part of their offering in the form of purses stuffed with golden coins. The gift received and thanks given, any guests who looked inclined to linger too long were soon chivvied into the dining room by this redoubtable lady. There was no doubt who was in charge here. When Farrukh Khan, one of the group of young men who formed the Sheikh’s unofficial bodyguard, tried to station himself behind the sofa, Tottie tapped his shoulder and with a jerk of her head sent him packing, to join the pair of bangers who were checking on the guests entering the lounge.
The self-important and officious manner of most of these self-appointed guards got up Sarhadi’s nose, but there was no escaping the fact that some lunatic had fired a gun at the Sheikh’s car, so any occasion which involved his presence meant you had to put up with the bangers too.
By now the flow of guests was dying to a trickle and Tottie was glancing at her watch with the satisfaction of someone whose timetable was proving atomically accurate. She frowned as she saw Farrukh’s bulky frame once more approaching the sofa, but the young man ignored her and said to Sarhadi, “Got a woman outside trying to get in. Says she’s a photographer and she knows you. You not been arranging another photographer, have you? My uncle Asif’s got the job, right?”
“Yeah, sure. What’s her name?” asked Sarhadi, puzzled.
“Kent, something like that, I think. I’ll tell her to push off.”
“No, hang on,” said Jamila. “Kentmore, could it be? Kilda Kentmore?”
“That’s right.”
“Kal, you remember her? Last week—she’s the sister-in-law of that guy who was on the TV with you. We met her again at the fete. I talked with her a lot. She’s a real photographer, Kal, did fashion, knows all the top models. If she wants to photograph us, let’s ask her in.”
“What about Uncle Asif?” protested Farrukh.
“What about him?” said Jamila with spirit. “Everyone knows he’s going blind in one eye and that’s the eye he puts to the viewfinder. I say you let Kilda in.”
Farrukh looked at Sarhadi. Tottie was one thing, but he wasn’t about to start taking instructions from this mouthy girl.
Sarhadi said, “Yeah. Why not? Let her through.”
6
HI-YO, SILVER!
To average fifty-plus miles per hour driving through urban West Yorkshire on a Saturday afternoon in the height of summer requires a lot of luck and a total disregard of law. In Pascoe’s wake the law was in tatters, but fortunately so far his luck had held. He knew he was acting irrationally but rationality involved time.
Across his mind, like a blizzard over an inland sea, raged everything that had happened since Mill Street blew up. Because he’d feared—because deep down he’d believed—that Andy Dalziel was going to die, he had ploughed forward in what to start with had seemed a simple inexorable search for certainties.
Oh what a dusty answer gets the soul…
He had made things happen, and the things he had made happen had made other things happen, so that in the end it wasn’t a simple trail that he had followed, but a track, many of whose twists and turns he had actually created. In trying to trace a line back from an effect to a cause he had himself become a cause and did not know if the place he was at now was a place that would have existed if he hadn’t started on his quest, whether he was the Red Cross Knight riding to the rescue or merely a bumbling Quixote, creating confusion rather than resolving it.
He would have liked nothing more than to pull over into a quiet lay-by, relax, and let everything that had happened, everything he knew, or thought he knew, or merely guessed at play across his mind till the surface lay still and the depths became clear.
But he just didn’t have the time.
The first cause, the death of Dalziel, was no longer a cause.
Of course he had only Wield’s secondhand account to assure him that the Fat Man had woken in his right mind. But somehow he felt certain that all was going to be well.
But how often did it happen that the starting point of a chain of action becomes irrelevant long before the end comes in sight?
No point in saying that if Dalziel had woken up the day after the explosion, he would not be here now, desperately driving like a madman toward what he fervently prayed would be nothing more than a rendezvous with a few harmless windmills.
As he got through Skipton, his car phone rang
“Yes!” he bellowed to activate the receiver.
It was Glenister. Being pissed off made her sound even more Scots than usual.
“What the hell’s going on? We’ve just heard that Youngman’s been taken. Your name was mentioned. Peter, you were warned to keep out of this stuff. Are you still playing the Lone fucking Ranger?”
Her emotion had the homeopathic effect of quelling his.
“Hi, Sandy,” he said calmly. “I was just going to ring you.”
It wasn’t a lie. As he drove along he’d found himself worrying about the consequences if something happened at Marrside and he hadn’t called his suspicions in. His conscience would find it hard to live with, his career impossible.
“Oh, good! So now I’ve saved you the bother. Fill me in!”
He said, “Let’s leave the details for later, OK? I’m on my way to Bradford. I’ve got reason to suspect a woman called Kilda Kentmore might be planning an attempt on Sheikh Ibrahim’s life. She’s five foot eight, slender, thin face, black hair. She may be armed with a sidearm, but that’s unlikely, too difficult to conceal. No, if she’s got anything, it will be a bomb, and I think it may be concealed in a camera. She’s a professional photographer, and I think she’s going to Sarhadi’s wedding reception. She won’t have been invited but he knows her, so it could be easy for her to blag her way in.”
There was a pause then Glenister said incredulously, “You’re telling me that there’s a Western suicide bomber going to Kalim Sarhadi’s wedding? Christ, Pete, these Templars are crazy but surely they’re not that crazy?”
“The others have been acting out of some half-baked notion of vigilante justice,” said Pascoe. “This one is just plain nuts. I think she wants to die. Look, it’s complicated. You need to get off the phone and alert your people. I’m pretty certain she won’t go to the mosque but she’ll head straight for the walima at the Marrside Grange Hotel, so tell your people watching the mosque to get along there straightaway. Tell them if they spot her, to approach with very great care.”
Another pause, then one stretching so long he said, “Sandy, you still there?”
Glenister said, “Peter, we’ve got no people at Marrside.”
“What? But you said there was an observation team on-site. That’s how you knew I’d gone to see Sarhadi…oh no. Don’t tell me, this is Mill Street all over again, right? Low-scale surveillance. Don’t run up overtime over weekends and Bank Holidays. Jesus, what kind of Fred Karno outfit are you people running?”
“Pete, my bonny lad, we’re not the CIA. Those plonkers in Westminster huff and puff about national security, but when it comes to doling out the dosh, they find it more painful than passing gallstones. How close are you?”
“Ten, fifteen minutes,” said Pascoe.
“OK
. I’ll get some people mobilized but you’ll definitely be first. At least you’ll recognize her. Kentmore? She related to the Kentmore your wife was on TV with?”
“Yes.”
“He mixed up with this?”
“Yes.”
“So where can we get hold of him?”
“He’s in custody. In the Mid-Yorkshire nick,” said Pascoe.
He didn’t anticipate congratulation and he didn’t get it.
“Since when, for Christ’s sake?”
“Since lunchtime.”
Again the silence, longer this time, but not ending in the expected explosion.
“Oh, Peter, Peter,” she finally breathed. “What have you been playing at?”
“I can explain, but not now, eh?”
“Of course not. After all, if you get to Marrside and find the hotel in rubble, there’s no explanation you can give which will be of any interest, is there?”
She rang off.
She was, he knew, right. If you played the Lone Ranger too long, there came a time when not even your faithful Indian companion could watch your back.
He threw back his head, yelled “Hi-yo Silver, away!” and stamped on the accelerator.
7
GATECRASHERS
Kilda Kentmore stepped into the hotel lounge.
What she would have done if refused entry she did not know because what she planned had such an air of inevitability about it, alternatives were pointless. What did these people say? It is written. Well, they were soon going to find out that non-believers could write a fair hand too.
No sign of the Sheikh. Not a problem. Her new sense of fatalism convinced her he’d be along shortly. Meanwhile she’d get the others used to her presence.
She advanced toward the sofa-throne, smiling.
Jamila returned her smile, with added brilliance. The girl looked so happy that for a moment Kilda felt uneasy at what she was going to do to her wedding day. But only for a moment. OK, the girl’s memory of her big day was going to have a shadow over it, but at least if all went well she’d be able to share many anniversaries with her husband.
Kalim said, “Nice to see you, but what are you doing here?”
“I was in Bradford, taking some pictures. And I remembered Jamila saying it was your wedding day today, and when I passed the hotel on my way to the motorway, I thought I’d see if I could get a few shots of you arriving or leaving or something. When I realized that everyone was inside already, I should just have carried on home. Sorry.”
“No. That’s fine. Look, we’re just finishing off in here, so if you’d like to take some shots of us sitting on this silly platform, that ’ud be grand.”
Behind him, his mother viewed the newcomer narrowly, but said nothing as she continued to muster the few remaining tribute-bearing guests.
Kilda moved around the room selecting different angles and pointing her camera at the loving couple from time to time. Finally the last of the guests went into the dining room. Tottie pulled tight the drawstrings on the linen bag into which she’d been dropping all the envelopes containing checks and notes as well as the pouches of coins, flourished it triumphantly to demonstrate its weight and said, “That’s it, all gathered in except for a couple, and I’ve got them on my list. Who’s this then, Kalim?”
Sarhadi introduced Kilda to his mother, who greeted her with a chilly politeness. She felt that family courtesy had necessitated inviting enough people she didn’t like without welcoming gate-crashers.
Kilda said, “Can I have one of you, Mrs. Sarhadi? You look great in that lovely outfit.”
“This is for free, is it?” checked Tottie.
“Aye, Mam, it’s for free,” said her son.
“She does the fashion photos in the glossies,” added Jamila.
“Oh, in that case,” said Tottie.
She placed the linen bag on the edge of the dais, patted her hair, then smiled widely at the camera.
“Lovely,” said Kilda. “Now I’m done. Unless there’s any chance of getting a shot of the bride and groom with the imam who conducted the ceremony. Is he still around?”
“Aye,” said Tottie without enthusiasm. “But you’ll not get near him without a note from the Islamic Council and an intimate body search.”
“Mam!” protested Sarhadi. “No need to be like that. Any road, you’re wrong, here he is now.”
The Sheikh had come into the room and was approaching them, smiling.
Kilda stepped into his path, her camera raised.
Get within three feet and you’ll blow his fucking beard off, Jonty had said.
What about anyone else? she’d asked.
He’d shrugged and said, Well, I’d not want to be in good spitting distance.
How far could he spit? wondered Kilda.
The Sheikh was about six feet away and still advancing.
Then Tottie, revealing the benefit of a good Yorkshire education, said, “Here’s another one barging in. It’ll be the ancient bloody mariner next!”
Everyone’s eyes turned toward the door except Kilda’s.
In the entrance, arguing with the self-appointed guardians, stood Peter Pascoe, his police ID in his hand.
Tiring of talk, he shouldered them aside and strode forward.
“Kilda!” he called.
Now the woman with the camera glanced at him and smiled before taking a step toward the Sheikh, who had come to a halt, sensing something was going on.
“Peter,” she said in a firm clear voice. “Stand still. And make sure everyone else stands still.”
She was right in front of the Sheikh now. The burly banger on the doorway started to advance into the room. Pascoe’s arm swung out and caught him across the midriff with a thud that drove the breath out of his body.
“Everybody stand still!” he yelled. “Dead still!”
Not his best choice of phrase perhaps, but it did the trick.
Everyone froze, the only movement the turmoil of expressions on their faces—bewilderment, alarm, anger, all mingling, each striving for dominance.
And then he added the words which put all other emotions in their pygmy place behind Giant Fear.
“She’s got a bomb,” he said.
8
IT IS WRITTEN
So you’re the infamous Sheikh Ibrahim,” said Kilda Kentmore.
She’d seen his photograph many times, and of course she’d seen him through the viewfinder of her camera that day she had wandered aimlessly, or at least without any conscious aim, to the Marrside Mosque, then taken that crazy potshot at his car.
How she’d got away with it she did not know, or care. She’d felt as she’d so often felt since Chris’s death, like a wraith drifting silently and unnoticed through a world of meaningless substance. She felt much the same now. Only two people existed in this room, Kilda Kentmore and Ibrahim Al-Hijazi, the destroyer and the soon-to-be-destroyed.
She studied him with a disinterested curiosity. He was quite a good-looking man, though she’d never much cared for beards. Certainly it was a face bearing little resemblance to the crazed caricatures of evil which appeared in the tabloid cartoons.
He was returning her gaze with a gentle inquiring smile.
“Yes, I am Sheikh Ibrahim,” he replied. “How can I help you, lady?”
“You can help me to be reunited with my husband,” she said.
“I should be pleased to do so, but I am not sure how you imagine I can.”
“Don’t you tell your followers that if they die in the act of destroying the enemies of your religion, their reward will be translation to paradise and the company of I forget how many young virgins?”
“I believe that seventy-two is the conventional number,” said the Sheikh.
“That seems a bit excessive,” said Kilda. “But by the rules of proportionality, it makes my own hope that by dying in the act of destroying an enemy of my religion I will be reunited with my own dear husband seem very reasonable, wouldn’t you say?”
He’s trying to get me not to hate him, thought Kilda. Silly man. Doesn’t he realize that hate has nothing to do with it? Except the hate I feel for my life.
“Sorry,” she said. “Time’s up. For you. For me.”
She held her camera up, her forefinger poised over the button.
“Kilda!” cried Pascoe, taking a step forward. “Do you want to kill all of us?”
“You saying this bomb’s in the camera?” said Tottie Sarhadi. “Bloody hell. And there was me smiling like a loon when she pointed it my way.”
The spell of petrifaction woven by the interchange between the Sheikh and Kilda was broken. Sarhadi drew Jamila close toward him and in the doorway the bangers began to chatter excitedly till Pascoe shut them up with a glance.
“You don’t want to kill everybody, do you?” Pascoe went on, desperate to engage Kilda’s attention. “Did Jonty tell you how much explosive he put in there? Did he?”
He thought he’d failed. She didn’t turn her head and nothing in her body language suggested she’d heard him. But the finger stayed poised and when she spoke it was in answer to his question.
“Enough,” she said.
“Enough for what?”
“To kill him and me.”
“In what circumstances? At what range? Ten feet away? Cheek to cheek? In the same room? Kilda, knowing Jonty, wouldn’t he give you a good margin for error? It could be if you set that device off now, it would take out everyone in this room.”
Again a pause, this time to consider what he’d said.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“But you don’t know! Do you really want to kill or maim these two young people? They’ve just got married, for God’s sake! They’ve got their whole life in front of them!”
“That’s what I thought when I got married,” she said. “At least they would go together.”
Death Comes for the Fat Man Page 38